He was overthinking this. There was one other logical explanation for her reticence. Normally, he wouldn’t be so pushy as to bring it up, but he and Dani had become genuinely close over the last several months. “Is it possible your problem is that you’re worried—consciously or subconsciously—about getting your heart broken again?”

“No, no,” she said quickly. “I’m post-love.”

“So you’ve said. I was just checking, but ‘post-love.’ I get it.”

“You too?”

“Yes. Well, that’s not right. ‘Post’ implies you’ve been in love.”

She snorted. “So you’re pre-love?”

“No. I don’t think so, at least.”

“Anti-love?” She laughed.

“I’m not against love. It’s more that I’m indifferent to it. I don’t think it works on me.”

“Is that why you agreed to marry Marie even though you weren’t in love with her?” Well. Here he’d thought they were talking about her. “Sorry,” she added quickly. “None of my business.”

“No, it’s fine. With you, I’m an open book.”

“Explain it to me, then—how you were going to marry Marie. I know the backstory. Uniting the houses and all that. But how did you square it in your mind?”

“I don’t know, really. It didn’t seem like such a bad scenario. I love Marie in a platonic way. She’s a cross between a sister and a best friend. She’s my only . . .” He’d been going to say she was his only confidant, but that wasn’t true anymore, was it? Max and Marie didn’t even talk that much these days, which he would have put down to her having Leo and being swept up in her new UN gig and in wedding preparations, but actually, he owed her a call. “It never felt like I was settling, because I’ve never found anyone I actively wanted to marry.”

“Because you’ve never been in love.”

“Correct. Marie and I had agreed we would do our duty with the old turkey baster—or with discreet medical intervention, if needed—but then we’d be free to live our lives.”

“Because you need an heir.”

“I don’t need one, and now I won’t have one. But that would have been the expected path, yes.”

She huffed an incredulous laugh. “I swear, half the time I forget who you are. I mean, not who you are, but that you’re a member of the aristocracy.”

He felt himself flush. That was exactly why he liked her so much. Her declaration felt like a compliment, though she probably hadn’t meant it that way. It was rare that someone saw him as a person first and a baron second.

“It sounds like a business arrangement,” she said.